Read by Council A Bold Idea - Remove almost all advantages of docked entities and replace their functions

[Dragleones]

1st snip: Uhm...ya they were/are; take your ship up to 2.4 million e/sec, after that add roughly 1.1 million e/sec per docked reactor for much less space than the equivalent 1.1 million on the main entity. Stacking optimized external reactors multiplies the linear growth mechanic you see arise after softcap on main entity by quite a large coefficient at the cost of design time, vulnerability, and mildly expensive secondary additions.

By a quite large coefficient?

The aim is to produce as much power as possible using as little space as possible:

Docked reactor:
Following numbers are from a spreadsheat i used for my current design:
Its far from perfect.
The aim was to produce a 149 long reactor.
(The 149 block length is just an artifical number made up related to the ship design and is only used as an example.)
23 stripes (only 147 blocks each long) provide the maximum average e/sec per block (474,64).
The 3335 reactor blocks produce 1582928,88 e/sec in total.
To relay the energy using power supply beams you need 4122,21 blocks or 29x147 blocks long stripes.
The supply beams can now provide up to 989330,5 e/sec.
If we ignore the logic/core/computer the whole thing uses 7540 blocks space therefore we end up with 131,21 e/sec per block.
Adding hull for visiuals and power storage i decided to go for 149x9x9. Ergo 12069 blocks per reactor providing 81,97 e/sec per block.

Lets say our ship has 23 power groups: 147 blocks long each, 3335 blocks total. Providing 1582928,88 e/sec therefore 474,64 e/sec per block.
Now we add docked reactors. (The hypothetical ones from before with 131,21 e/sec per block)

If we add 2 we end up with:
3335+(7540*2)=18 415 blocks
1582928,88+(989330,5*2)=3 561 589 e/sec
on avg: 193,407 e/sec per block

If we add 10 we end up with:
3335+(7540*10)=78 735 blocks
1582928,88+(989330,5*10)=11 476 233 e/sec
on avg: 145,7 e/sec per block

If we add 50 we end up with:
3335+(7540*50)=380 335 blocks
1582928,88+(989330,5*50)=51 049 453 e/sec
on avg: 134,2 e/sec per block

If we add an infinite amout we approach 131,21 e/sec per block

No Docked reactor:
If we just add raw power reactors once we hit the 2 000 000 e/sec cap we quickly approach an average of 25 e/sec per block.

To put it into perspective if we do a rough estimation how many blocks we need to reach the same amout of power generation as in the example above. (We assume that at that size the layout doesn't matter anymore so we can subtract the 2000000 e/sec provided by that. So we only need to look at the 25 e/sec per power block added)

To reach 3 561 589 e/sec we need about (1561589/25)= 62 463 blocks
To reach 11 476 233 e/sec we need about (9476233/25)= 379 049 blocks
To reach 51 049 453 e/sec we need about (49049453/25)= 1 961 978 blocks

Multiple ships:
For comparability each of our ships has 23 stripes of power blocks. Each is 147 blocks long.
The 3335 reactor blocks produce 1582928,88 e/sec in total. On average e/sec per block (474,64).

To put it into perspective:
For our fleet to reach a combined amout of 3 561 589 e/sec
we need (3561589/1592028,88)= 2,237 ships
or (3561589/474,6)= 7 503 blocks combined

For our fleet to reach a combined amout of 11 476 233 e/sec
we need (11476233/1592028,88)= 7,208 ships
or (11476233/474,64)= 24 178 blocks combined

For our fleet to reach a combined amount of 51 049 453 e/sec
we need (51049453/1592028,88)= 32,065 ships
or (51049453/474,64)= 107 554 blocks combined

Conclusion:
But how are these numbers combarable? You can directly convert e/sec in dps which is basically firepower and can very well be used as a index of strength.
In reality power reactors are cheap. Docked reactors are much more expensive. But lets forget that and just assume all the blocks above are power reactor blocks.

Long rambling for a simple point to make:
Now if i have about 25 000 power reactor blocks avaible and controllability is not an issue.
Why would i ever build a ship with docked reactors that provides about 4 500 000 e/sec instead of building 7 ships that provide more than 11 000 000 e/sec combined.
If we use the avg. e/sec per blocks that the different methods approach at high numbers we can say that in this example using multiple ships is more than 3,6 times more efficient.
Using multiple ships you can reduce the total mass and size of the power generation by factor of 3,6 ! Basically more thrust/easier achievable defensive effects/smaller.
And then you have to consider that power generation using power supply beams is also much much more expansive.
And keep in mind that this docked reactor design is vastly overstated so in reality its even worse.

This is also one of the reasons why drones are that powerful.

 

[Benevolent27]

This would make building large ships kind of dumb. You'd just spam blocks with no consideration for arrangement of systems... At least under the current system, with smaller ships you have to figure out an efficient reactor design and with larger ships you have to arrange your systems around docked reactors in a neat way.

Personally, I prefer the idea of having explosive generation modules that scale linearly, or if not, scale by group size and have a much higher soft cap.

I think the question we all need to ask is what the game can actually handle. Then the game mechanics need to encourage people to build up to that size. If a person builds a ship that is larger than this, there should be in-game mechanics to discourage it. In other words, their large, laggy ship should die the horrible death that it deserves. lol. But, I also do like the idea of having tiers of systems, so there isn't a sharp cut-off. Just relying on the 2m e/sec power cap is too sharp of a cut-off to me. For larger ships, introducing the risk of using explosive power generators makes it so the larger the ship is, the more of these blocks would be required to power it.. and thus the higher the risk to the whole ship. People would learn very quickly that a few smaller ships with alphastrike weapons can take em out, and they will stop building their multi-million mass ships.

Though I think the multi-million mass ships are REALLY COOL looking, they just simply are not practical for the game. People can build a 300k ship that looks really cool too. We gotta be realistic here.
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By a quite large coefficient?

The aim is to produce as much power as possible using as little space as possible:

Docked reactor:
Following numbers are from a spreadsheat i used for my current design:
Its far from perfect.
The aim was to produce a 149 long reactor.
(The 149 block length is just an artifical number made up related to the ship design and is only used as an example.)
23 stripes (only 147 blocks each long) provide the maximum average e/sec per block (474,64).
The 3335 reactor blocks produce 1582928,88 e/sec in total.
To relay the energy using power supply beams you need 4122,21 blocks or 29x147 blocks long stripes.
The supply beams can now provide up to 989330,5 e/sec.
If we ignore the logic/core/computer the whole thing uses 7540 blocks space therefore we end up with 131,21 e/sec per block.
Adding hull for visiuals and power storage i decided to go for 149x9x9. Ergo 12069 blocks per reactor providing 81,97 e/sec per block.

Lets say our ship has 23 power groups: 147 blocks long each, 3335 blocks total. Providing 1582928,88 e/sec therefore 474,64 e/sec per block.
Now we add docked reactors. (The hypothetical ones from before with 131,21 e/sec per block)

If we add 2 we end up with:
3335+(7540*2)=18 415 blocks
1582928,88+(989330,5*2)=3 561 589 e/sec
on avg: 193,407 e/sec per block

If we add 10 we end up with:
3335+(7540*10)=78 735 blocks
1582928,88+(989330,5*10)=11 476 233 e/sec
on avg: 145,7 e/sec per block

If we add 50 we end up with:
3335+(7540*50)=380 335 blocks
1582928,88+(989330,5*50)=51 049 453 e/sec
on avg: 134,2 e/sec per block

If we add an infinite amout we approach 131,21 e/sec per block

No Docked reactor:
If we just add raw power reactors once we hit the 2 000 000 e/sec cap we quickly approach an average of 25 e/sec per block.

To put it into perspective if we do a rough estimation how many blocks we need to reach the same amout of power generation as in the example above. (We assume that at that size the layout doesn't matter anymore so we can subtract the 2000000 e/sec provided by that. So we only need to look at the 25 e/sec per power block added)

To reach 3 561 589 e/sec we need about (1561589/25)= 62 463 blocks
To reach 11 476 233 e/sec we need about (9476233/25)= 379 049 blocks
To reach 51 049 453 e/sec we need about (49049453/25)= 1 961 978 blocks

Multiple ships:
For comparability each of our ships has 23 stripes of power blocks. Each is 147 blocks long.
The 3335 reactor blocks produce 1582928,88 e/sec in total. On average e/sec per block (474,64).

To put it into perspective:
For our fleet to reach a combined amout of 3 561 589 e/sec
we need (3561589/1592028,88)= 2,237 ships
or (3561589/474,6)= 7 503 blocks combined

For our fleet to reach a combined amout of 11 476 233 e/sec
we need (11476233/1592028,88)= 7,208 ships
or (11476233/474,64)= 24 178 blocks combined

For our fleet to reach a combined amount of 51 049 453 e/sec
we need (51049453/1592028,88)= 32,065 ships
or (51049453/474,64)= 107 554 blocks combined

Conclusion:
But how are these numbers combarable? You can directly convert e/sec in dps which is basically firepower and can very well be used as a index of strength.
In reality power reactors are cheap. Docked reactors are much more expensive. But lets forget that and just assume all the blocks above are power reactor blocks.

Long rambling for a simple point to make:
Now if i have about 25 000 power reactor blocks avaible and controllability is not an issue.
Why would i ever build a ship with docked reactors that provides about 4 500 000 e/sec instead of building 7 ships that provide more than 11 000 000 e/sec combined.
If we use the avg. e/sec per blocks that the different methods approach at high numbers we can say that in this example using multiple ships is more than 3,6 times more efficient.
Using multiple ships you can reduce the total mass and size of the power generation by factor of 3,6 ! Basically more thrust/easier achievable defensive effects/smaller.
And then you have to consider that power generation using power supply beams is also much much more expansive.
And keep in mind that this docked reactor design is vastly overstated so in reality its even worse.

This is also one of the reasons why drones are that powerful.

I like your use of colors and formatting. Though I didn't quite understand the "134,2 e/sec" type figures. Why is there a comma to the left of the 2? And why is the figure so small? lol.

But this aside, it's well known that straight power reactors will require a LOT more blocks and weight compared to power injectors. It's also well known that building separate ships is more power efficient than using power injectors. However, they are less efficient for power capacitors and for shield capacity. Having 1 giant pool of shields keeps all those turrets firing longer than having the turrets as separate ships. A large ship will IMMEDIATELY pulverize smaller ships, and thus reduce the total damage output from that fleet. The fleet, however, can distribute damage, so that large alphastrike weapons on a big ship are greatly reduced in effectiveness. There are different balances to work out here. One of the things I do on my ships is I have a LOT of turrets, many of which are set to attack "any." I do not use many "alphastrike" weapons, instead preferring to distribute that damage to as many vector points as possible. This allows my ships to massacre clouds of drones of equal weight. I would welcome you to build a fleet of ships equal to 65k in weight and try to destroy my battleminer. Or 78k to destroy my shredder v1, or 100k for shredder v2.

 

[DrTarDIS]

It's not retarded because these docked injectors are protected. All things being equal, a ship that has them docked on the outside WILL lose to a ship that has them docked in the inside, which is why it is what almost everyone does. I also disagree with your theory that beams are less effective when a power injector is inside of a ship. So long as there are a few blocks there.. it's fine. You do not need the whole width of a ship to absorb the beam.

For trying to convince server admins to ban ships that use internal docked reactors, trust me, I have. They can see the logic in it, but they don't want to force people to rebuild their ships either. This includes their own. Every serious ship builder on the server has interior docked power injectors. I suggest changes in the game mechanics, because even though the changes may be painful, I see them as necessary, and they should be phased into the game itself, with an adjustment period. For the "overheating protection," well sure, but on the other hand no. I use docked thruster plates to provide overheating protection on a mining ship of mine, but I do not want my docked injectors to fail, because then my ION effect and radarjamming goes down. I have found that keeping the power coming is more important than a little bit of overheating protection in most cases.

I think I recognize your logic to the building style, but some of your assumptions puzzle me. Oddly, I'm going to have to address your points out of order to try to convey my point in a slightly different light.

"convincing server admins to ban the internal reactors" would directly address the undocking lag in combat issue, simply because, once the shields go down all cannons penetrate enough to hit those internal guys anyways. Sure, you have 50% more alpha you can handle with your main ship in between before block damage starts occuring, but you lose out on the reactor/ablative having the chance to "off tank" for a few seconds, via it's own shield system, before your shields have dropped and your ion effect is long since gone so the bonus power isn't really needed anyways.

I think your DPS-centric rather than mixed spike/burst building style may be the source of your reasoning on why "internals will always win"(if they don't crash the server and require restore from backup because they don't work if you look at them the wrong way). I disagree with you on this point from my own experiences. Even if it's not intending to be an off-tank while you resolve your cooldowns, an external "injector" as you are calling it can easily be on the "rear" of your ship, well out of the arc of fire of a typical strafe-clash fight and giving you the power you need right up until there's been so much fatal damage it's probably consuming more power than it's giving.
Even if this docked entity is essentially an "armory" for a "gun emplacement" and not injecting the power back into the main ship...those turrets would be way better off being over-parity self powered guns than from drawing up from a storage unit to begin with, even if it saves you a few blocks out of 1000 in total capacitors/generators to keep it in one clump. Consider this: once that main power block takes damage to it's power systems and they get the failure penalties, it ain't doing it's job for any of those turrets, where spreading it out over the turrets themselves keeps each one with a discreet "failure point" before it needs to "dig deep" to fire. Redundancy is key to any protracted engagement IMHO.

in regards to...

They can see the logic in it, but they don't want to force people to rebuild their ships either...because even though the changes may be painful, I see them as necessary

That's politics I guess. "I kill the server if I die" is an effective nuclear deterrent, I've used it myself. It doesn't seem to actually allow you to USE your toys though. And I think that's kinda the point. Being powerful is great, but being powerful AND throwing your weight around is much more fun to me.

 

[Benevolent27]

Actually the dev team has already investigated this and concluded that docked reactors should eventually go. They cause plenty of lag, and are an unintended barrier to pass in mastering the game's mechanics. I am fairly certain shield and power supply were intended for external transfer, not internal transfer, when they were put in the game.

To be completely honest, I think ship specialization would become more prominent if we did not replace docked reactors with anything once they were removed. Ships do not need every type of system. If the AI becomes good enough, then fleet ships can take the role of the various modules you would normally fit to your ship.

We have plans for a replacement, but it will likely require more discussion when we get closer to implementing anything.

I think if there were just a straight power cap, it would force players to build a lot smaller. Some people might be ok with this, but others will really dislike it. This also doesn't address using docked entities to power turrets. I know it's kind of a hard question, but this is why I say give server admins the control to implement things as they would like, in order to reduce docked entity lag that occurs.

 

[StarHustler]

The question is, how do you actually fix all the problems inherent in internally docked entities, not just the use of power supply generators?

If they just make it so a docked entity cannot shoot a power supply beam at anything that's part of it's parents tree of docked entities there will still be self powered internally docked shield walls and the like that cause server crashing lag when they become undocked.

If they try to code something that detects and tries to determine what kind of internally docked entity it is it will be hard to prevent it from being bypassed by adding things to the entity that make it look like something else (adding an ai, a weapons computer, and a single weapon module would make an internal shield entity look like a weapon platform). There would also be a high potential for false positives.

Anything that prevents internal docking altogether would remove the ability to have rail mounted turrets that hide inside the ship until needed, shuttle bays, embedded torpedo magazines, as well as several neat embedded entities Shine staff have designed and released to the community.

I don't know about anyone else but I'd be pretty dissatisfied if the following things were no longer possible:

--Turrets barrels being powered and shielded by their base's reactors so the barrel doesn't have to be filled full of power, capacitors, shield caps and rechargers.

--Centrally docked turret mounts for floating turrets that rotate around their parent entity (the other way of doing this is with green pickup rails and those end up being an awful fidgety mess moving at a snails pace even at max rail speed).

--Self-powered modular shield entities that dock to the ship and act as ablative armor for when main shields go down.

--Pretty much anything people have come up with that is more complex than an externally docked turret and provides any benefit to having it beyond just looking cool (internally docked power supply beam generators are of course not counted among these).

 

[Malacodor]

The question is, how do you actually fix all the problems inherent in internally docked entities, not just the use of power supply generators?

There's an easy solution: If an undocked entity can't move in any direction it stays aligned to its host and no collision checks are made. It physically remains part of the ship, only the power/thrust/cargo transfer is cut off.

Anything that prevents internal docking altogether would remove the ability to have rail mounted turrets that hide inside the ship until needed, shuttle bays, embedded torpedo magazines, as well as several neat embedded entities Shine staff have designed and released to the community.

It isn't even possible to distinguish between 'internal' and 'external' in a way that can't be easily circumvented. Just make a one block wide hole in the hull and the inside counts as outside.

 

[Raisinbat]

Allow servers to be configured to take away the incentives to have docked entities

Yes...

and replace those options with better ones

...no.

You want to get rid of docked reactors? REMOVE THE POWER BONUS. Power is too damn easy to add in the game allready, and here you are asking for more. I need to stop going here, this place hurts my brain

 

[Lecic]

You want to get rid of docked reactors? REMOVE THE POWER BONUS.

Is this a joke? Ships would have to dedicate way more of their systems towards power, and there would be zero incentive to build small, because a big ship would be just as power efficient. By having a replacement system that, say, costs fuel, you allow big ships to have the power they need, without making them objectively better, because they have the constant cost of fuel.

 

[Raisinbat]

Is this a joke? Ships would have to dedicate way more of their systems towards power, and there would be zero incentive to build small, because a big ship would be just as power efficient. By having a replacement system that, say, costs fuel, you allow big ships to have the power they need, without making them objectively better, because they have the constant cost of fuel.

You're completely right about this, but writing up all the fucking problems this game has with balance would take weeks. There's no single thing you can fix in starmade because its broken on broken on broken on broken. Power is too readily available is one of the big issues the game has, and removing the power bonus would fix at least that one thing (and also make power design extremely boring without adding more complexity).

Although what difference does it make? Big ships are allready far superior to small ones in terms of efficiency as long as you have docked systems, and waaay worse if you dont. (small being 5k+ mass)

 

[Lecic]

Although what difference does it make? Big ships are allready far superior to small ones in terms of efficiency as long as you have docked systems, and waaay worse if you dont. (small being 5k+ mass)

Docked reactors are less efficient than normal power beneath the ~2 mil softcap.

 

[StarHustler]

There's an easy solution: If an undocked entity can't move in any direction it stays aligned to its host and no collision checks are made. It physically remains part of the ship, only the power/thrust/cargo transfer is cut off.

I like this idea. With some minor adjustments it could work as a clamping system for attaching to an enemy ship with a boarding vessel as well. However it wouldn't cut off the power transfer as that's handled by the power supply beam rather than docking mechanics.

 

[Benevolent27]

You're completely right about this, but writing up all the fucking problems this game has with balance would take weeks. There's no single thing you can fix in starmade because its broken on broken on broken on broken. Power is too readily available is one of the big issues the game has, and removing the power bonus would fix at least that one thing (and also make power design extremely boring without adding more complexity).

Although what difference does it make? Big ships are allready far superior to small ones in terms of efficiency as long as you have docked systems, and waaay worse if you dont. (small being 5k+ mass)

You're being kind of doom and gloom here Raisinbat. There's no need for this. The game is in alpha, and it's being worked on.

But about your comments on inbalance.. When there is only one group of items available to everyone, "balance" is really more preference. Everyone has access to the same systems. It's not like someone can get the upper hand on me, unless they've figured out systems combos that simply work better than the ones I use. I'm curious to know what you mean by a lack of balance? Is it the over-reliance on turrets? Offline (and unprotected) bases being vulnerable to long-range lock-on missiles? Permanent Home base invulnerability that costs no faction points? I kind of think these things are preferences though, not balance issues. If you have a preference to see more weapon systems types, perhaps more situations where different weapons combos can be used, ect., that's what this forum is for, right? The game is in flux, things will change.

My big concern with this thread is that I have been noticing a trend where docked entities continue to become more and more popular, due to the bonuses for using them. Whether done intentionally or not by Schema, this has been leading toward standards for ship building to produce ships that generate very large lag-spikes for both players and servers. Though I like the diversity in ship building this promotes, I think the lag is a major, major problem. People like to build ships that are far larger than Shine intended for people to be able to realistically build and operate. Originally, it seems, the power cap was meant as a way to limit ship size, but the power supply beam was found to work at transferring power to the main ship from a docked entity, and this enabled much larger ships to have more systems on them, like large jump inhibitors, ion effect, radarjamming, etc. People have become used to this as a standard, and they have spent many hours, days, weeks, months building very large ships that use these systems. I would agree with you that the docked power reactors have encouraged the playerbase to create ships that are much too large for the game to handle, and which promotes very laggy gameplay across the board. But at the same time, if we just suddenly neutered everyone's large ships, it would lead to a rather large backlash of disappointment for the community, since everyone's larger ships would suddenly cease to be functional. So, I say give server operators the ability to either have laggier servers that allow the power generation needed to support larger ships (but at least do this without separate entities providing the power, and thus reducing lag a big), but also allow other servers to disable these to ensure they can better control the size of ships.
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Is this a joke? Ships would have to dedicate way more of their systems towards power, and there would be zero incentive to build small, because a big ship would be just as power efficient. By having a replacement system that, say, costs fuel, you allow big ships to have the power they need, without making them objectively better, because they have the constant cost of fuel.

I think the developers are trying to avoid fuel based systems because they want the game to have more of an arcade feel to it, where you can build a ship and go. No need to constantly collect resources just to move your ships. But, I think they should give options, through new block types. So if they implement a nuclear reactor, for example, give control to server server owners how this new block functions. Does it require a new type of ore, uranium, to run? Does it explode if destroyed? Does it even exist on the server or are people held to the soft-cap (thus reducing ship sizes and promoting less laggy gameplay)?

 

[Raisinbat]

You're being kind of doom and gloom here Raisinbat. There's no need for this. The game is in alpha, and it's being worked on.

When i started playing 1½ years ago beams were completely broken, passing harmlessly through ships. They still are.

The work schine are doing is only adding more features to a pile of broken, thinking they're going to magically ballance everything in one big swoosh at the end is insanely stupid, and every time they try to ballance stuff they just screw it up more (last power update) because they don't have a clue what they're doing in terms of mechanics.

This also makes the whole early access premise kinda nonsensical since we cant give feedback on placeholder mechanics properly. Starmade needs a mechanical overhaul, changes in values CANNOT ballance it because it just moves the apex around, isntead of making multiple options viable, and when you add more stuff on top of broken stuff it all keeps piling on; How can they do out of sector combat when combat is such a mess right now? If they'd focus on making a stable base they can expand on we'd have a much better game and a more useful early access that could actually contribute to the mechanics. Instead we get dumb threads like this that just demonstrates you can't fix one problem when there's a million others in the game.

But about your comments on inbalance.. When there is only one group of items available to everyone, "balance" is really more preference. Everyone has access to the same systems. It's not like someone can get the upper hand on me, unless they've figured out systems combos that simply work better than the ones I use. I'm curious to know what you mean by a lack of balance? Is it the over-reliance on turrets? Offline (and unprotected) bases being vulnerable to long-range lock-on missiles? Permanent Home base invulnerability that costs no faction points? I kind of think these things are preferences though, not balance issues. If you have a preference to see more weapon systems types, perhaps more situations where different weapons combos can be used, ect., that's what this forum is for, right? The game is in flux, things will change.

Okay then my problem is that starmade's mechanics do not allow for any reasonable variety in ship design. Every ship follows the same formulla of mixing in 2.0 thrust to mass, 60% ion effect, scanner, overdrive, and rest goes into weapons power and shield where the only real variation is. You can deviate from this but your ships will always be inferior to ships that dont. Yes, we all have the exact same tools available so noone is "worse off" in this respect, but when 99% of the tools dont work or are statistically inferior, that toolbox is a broken mess.

There isnt even an appreciable difference between fighters and titans besides speed and size, they function the same way, fly the same way, there isnt even a reason to use different weapons against them because the guns that are good against titans are also going to be good against fighters.

Starmade has 2 worthwhile weapon systems (can/beam and mis/beam), 3 if you count PD systems (can/can), every other weapon system is universally inferior.

My big concern with this thread is that I have been noticing a trend where docked entities continue to become more and more popular, due to the bonuses for using them. Whether done intentionally or not by Schema, this has been leading toward standards for ship building to produce ships that generate very large lag-spikes for both players and servers. Though I like the diversity in ship building this promotes, I think the lag is a major, major problem. People like to build ships that are far larger than Shine intended for people to be able to realistically build and operate. Originally, it seems, the power cap was meant as a way to limit ship size, but the power supply beam was found to work at transferring power to the main ship from a docked entity, and this enabled much larger ships to have more systems on them, like large jump inhibitors, ion effect, radarjamming, etc. People have become used to this as a standard, and they have spent many hours, days, weeks, months building very large ships that use these systems. I would agree with you that the docked power reactors have encouraged the playerbase to create ships that are much too large for the game to handle, and which promotes very laggy gameplay across the board. But at the same time, if we just suddenly neutered everyone's large ships, it would lead to a rather large backlash of disappointment for the community, since everyone's larger ships would suddenly cease to be functional. So, I say give server operators the ability to either have laggier servers that allow the power generation needed to support larger ships (but at least do this without separate entities providing the power, and thus reducing lag a big), but also allow other servers to disable these to ensure they can better control the size of ships.

You're right. You're absolutely right; multi-entity ship design is stupid and awkward and i'd love to abandon it, HOWEVER:

Fun tip: When playing videogames people go for the option with the best outcome. Docked everything is chosen because you get more power for less mass = better. People go for larger ships because there is proportionally less armor compared to systems = better stats = better. Schema has made ships broken up into submodules by far the most efficient way to build ships, whether that's intentional or not, people are going to go with the best designs. This is due to two mechanics that fuck everything up:

• Power bonus and power storage bonuses for each entity
• Passive systems take up % of mass

The power bonus needs to be removed; as long as its in docked entities provide a massive benefit; you dont even need power supply beams just put power generation in turret bases and it's all fixed; how did OP intend to fix THAT? In game design simple solutions are the best ones. Remove the bonus and the problem goes away.

But nooo we wont hear that because we NEED that power; but you only need that power because of the other fucking problems this game is littered with! Look at other spezship games; EVE, starsector, X-series, Freelancer etc etc, none of those ships are permanently power stable, but they don't use their power to simply MOVE. Part of those games is CHOOSING WHAT SYSTEMS YOU USE YOUR POWER ON but that doesn't work in starmade because power is dirt cheap and infinitely available while systems and weapons eat up a much larger portion of your ship. This also means ships never have a mixture of systems, you never ballance systems, because having 2-3 strong systems that are always running keeps your ship strong while having half your mass inactive all the time doesn't!

And ffs when are people going to complain about the percentage of mass for passive systems??? Has nobody figured out that having shields and thrusters on seperate entities gives you about 20-30% more mass for systems simply because the passive ion, overdrive and scanners are only based of the mass of their own entities? You can double your fucking shield strength or damage, why are you only talking about power???

It also means having interior or any other cosmetic pieces of shit on your ship, or just a non-cylindrical hull gets smacked around for absolutely no reason! Look at this ship:

This design would never work in starmade because its wasting massive amounts of surface area with little volume = more armor and less systems! You clowns say you want more variety but this is killing it! Rework passive systems to not be this retarded % shit!

Seriously the lazy ass design of passive systems bothers me a lot more than the power problems. I made a thread about it like a year ago and nobody gave a shit so why am i even bothering typing this out again? GIVE PASSIVE EFFECTS LINEAR POWER: let armor completely negate 2 damage for every block of passive punch-through effect, OH NO NOW MY TINY FIGHTER CANT KILL THE TITANS ANYMORE WHICH IT WAS SUPER GOOD AT BEFORE??? BECAUSE WEAPON DESIGN IS ALSO RETARDED AND GIVES NO WAY TO TRADE RANGE, PROJECTILE SPEED OR ACCURACY FOR MORE DAMAGE!!! WHY AM I STILL TYPING NOBODY IS READING THIS!!! YOU PROBABLY GAVE UP IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SECOND QUOTE I HATE THESE FORUMS BLAAARFFFFFF

I think the developers are trying to avoid fuel based systems because they want the game to have more of an arcade feel to it, where you can build a ship and go. No need to constantly collect resources just to move your ships. But, I think they should give options, through new block types. So if they implement a nuclear reactor, for example, give control to server server owners how this new block functions. Does it require a new type of ore, uranium, to run? Does it explode if destroyed? Does it even exist on the server or are people held to the soft-cap (thus reducing ship sizes and promoting less laggy gameplay)?

Schine has zero idea what they're doing: If this was supposed to be an arcade game what the hell are fleets or rails doing in the game? The council is more evidence that they dont know what they're doing and want THE COMMUNITY to tell them what to do. Obvious issue is that THE COMMUNITY is a bunch of sperging idiots like me who all want different things so the game ends up as a dumb melting pot of ideas with no coherent direction.

Also fuck your "options", games like starmade and transport tycoon drown in options because the ballance is completely shit, and the devs just gave up making it work so now THE COMMUNITY can fix it by making the values whatever they want when the real problem are the underlying mechanics.

Also also freedom is cancer to videogames. When you can just go everywhere and do everything with no limits, there's no REASON to do anything. If the game required fuel or actual factories and refineries to get anywhere we'd have a lot more cool stations being built and tankers floating around space delivering fuel. There'd be a tradelines you could attack as a pirate and space would maybe matter a little bit more, but nooo because empty space and total freedom is the ultimate goal of videogames, after all mario would be so much better if you didn't have that stupid colission detection.

Fuck i'm still triggered okay one more spergout

But at the same time, if we just suddenly neutered everyone's large ships, it would lead to a rather large backlash of disappointment for the community, since everyone's larger ships would suddenly cease to be functional

I used to play Final Fantasy XI some years back. It had a rather infamous patch called the great Ranger Nerf, in which ranged attacks got a big nerf at mellee range, because Rangers were doing meellee AND ranged attacks at the same time making them stupidly overpowered. It caused a massive backlash with thousands of players leaving the game, and it was the last time the dev ever nerfed a class again. This sparked the death of the game as powercreep started spiraling out of control, eventually resulting in stupidly powerful content being added and the game becoming too easy, but that's besides the point.

The point is people didn't leave because they were less powerful. They left because they sunk thousands of hours into expensive equipment that favored the duality between mellee and ranged, which went from millions in value to tens of thousands. If they had just. fucking. patched. the game when it was discovered instead of 3 years later nobody would've made a fuzz.

Starmade NEEDS change. The longer you wait before making the changes the more it's going to hurt when they do come. There's no way current ships wont become obsolete, but i'd rather lose a thousand hours of work if it means getting a solid foundation we can work from. That's why schine's bullshit approach of not ballancing the game until later is so awful, and it's just going to keep getting worse. If they'd focus on making a solid, well ballanced foundation from the get-go we could have basic ships working that wouldn't end up ruined every time another shitty patch comes out.

But hey at least we've got FUCKING WHALES right?

Sincerely triggered
Raisinbat

 

[Benevolent27]

When i started playing 1½ years ago beams were completely broken, passing harmlessly through ships. They still are.

The work schine are doing is only adding more features to a pile of broken, thinking they're going to magically ballance everything in one big swoosh at the end is insanely stupid, and every time they try to ballance stuff they just screw it up more (last power update) because they don't have a clue what they're doing in terms of mechanics.

This also makes the whole early access premise kinda nonsensical since we cant give feedback on placeholder mechanics properly. Starmade needs a mechanical overhaul, changes in values CANNOT ballance it because it just moves the apex around, isntead of making multiple options viable, and when you add more stuff on top of broken stuff it all keeps piling on; How can they do out of sector combat when combat is such a mess right now? If they'd focus on making a stable base they can expand on we'd have a much better game and a more useful early access that could actually contribute to the mechanics. Instead we get dumb threads like this that just demonstrates you can't fix one problem when there's a million others in the game.



Okay then my problem is that starmade's mechanics do not allow for any reasonable variety in ship design. Every ship follows the same formulla of mixing in 2.0 thrust to mass, 60% ion effect, scanner, overdrive, and rest goes into weapons power and shield where the only real variation is. You can deviate from this but your ships will always be inferior to ships that dont. Yes, we all have the exact same tools available so noone is "worse off" in this respect, but when 99% of the tools dont work or are statistically inferior, that toolbox is a broken mess.

There isnt even an appreciable difference between fighters and titans besides speed and size, they function the same way, fly the same way, there isnt even a reason to use different weapons against them because the guns that are good against titans are also going to be good against fighters.

Starmade has 2 worthwhile weapon systems (can/beam and mis/beam), 3 if you count PD systems (can/can), every other weapon system is universally inferior.



You're right. You're absolutely right; multi-entity ship design is stupid and awkward and i'd love to abandon it, HOWEVER:

Fun tip: When playing videogames people go for the option with the best outcome. Docked everything is chosen because you get more power for less mass = better. People go for larger ships because there is proportionally less armor compared to systems = better stats = better. Schema has made ships broken up into submodules by far the most efficient way to build ships, whether that's intentional or not, people are going to go with the best designs. This is due to two mechanics that fuck everything up:

• Power bonus and power storage bonuses for each entity
• Passive systems take up % of mass

The power bonus needs to be removed; as long as its in docked entities provide a massive benefit; you dont even need power supply beams just put power generation in turret bases and it's all fixed; how did OP intend to fix THAT? In game design simple solutions are the best ones. Remove the bonus and the problem goes away.

But nooo we wont hear that because we NEED that power; but you only need that power because of the other fucking problems this game is littered with! Look at other spezship games; EVE, starsector, X-series, Freelancer etc etc, none of those ships are permanently power stable, but they don't use their power to simply MOVE. Part of those games is CHOOSING WHAT SYSTEMS YOU USE YOUR POWER ON but that doesn't work in starmade because power is dirt cheap and infinitely available while systems and weapons eat up a much larger portion of your ship. This also means ships never have a mixture of systems, you never ballance systems, because having 2-3 strong systems that are always running keeps your ship strong while having half your mass inactive all the time doesn't!

And ffs when are people going to complain about the percentage of mass for passive systems??? Has nobody figured out that having shields and thrusters on seperate entities gives you about 20-30% more mass for systems simply because the passive ion, overdrive and scanners are only based of the mass of their own entities? You can double your fucking shield strength or damage, why are you only talking about power???

It also means having interior or any other cosmetic pieces of shit on your ship, or just a non-cylindrical hull gets smacked around for absolutely no reason! Look at this ship:

This design would never work in starmade because its wasting massive amounts of surface area with little volume = more armor and less systems! You clowns say you want more variety but this is killing it! Rework passive systems to not be this retarded % shit!

Seriously the lazy ass design of passive systems bothers me a lot more than the power problems. I made a thread about it like a year ago and nobody gave a shit so why am i even bothering typing this out again? GIVE PASSIVE EFFECTS LINEAR POWER: let armor completely negate 2 damage for every block of passive punch-through effect, OH NO NOW MY TINY FIGHTER CANT KILL THE TITANS ANYMORE WHICH IT WAS SUPER GOOD AT BEFORE??? BECAUSE WEAPON DESIGN IS ALSO RETARDED AND GIVES NO WAY TO TRADE RANGE, PROJECTILE SPEED OR ACCURACY FOR MORE DAMAGE!!! WHY AM I STILL TYPING NOBODY IS READING THIS!!! YOU PROBABLY GAVE UP IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SECOND QUOTE I HATE THESE FORUMS BLAAARFFFFFF



Schine has zero idea what they're doing: If this was supposed to be an arcade game what the hell are fleets or rails doing in the game? The council is more evidence that they dont know what they're doing and want THE COMMUNITY to tell them what to do. Obvious issue is that THE COMMUNITY is a bunch of sperging idiots like me who all want different things so the game ends up as a dumb melting pot of ideas with no coherent direction.

Also fuck your "options", games like starmade and transport tycoon drown in options because the ballance is completely shit, and the devs just gave up making it work so now THE COMMUNITY can fix it by making the values whatever they want when the real problem are the underlying mechanics.

Also also freedom is cancer to videogames. When you can just go everywhere and do everything with no limits, there's no REASON to do anything. If the game required fuel or actual factories and refineries to get anywhere we'd have a lot more cool stations being built and tankers floating around space delivering fuel. There'd be a tradelines you could attack as a pirate and space would maybe matter a little bit more, but nooo because empty space and total freedom is the ultimate goal of videogames, after all mario would be so much better if you didn't have that stupid colission detection.

Fuck i'm still triggered okay one more spergout

I used to play Final Fantasy XI some years back. It had a rather infamous patch called the great Ranger Nerf, in which ranged attacks got a big nerf at mellee range, because Rangers were doing meellee AND ranged attacks at the same time making them stupidly overpowered. It caused a massive backlash with thousands of players leaving the game, and it was the last time the dev ever nerfed a class again. This sparked the death of the game as powercreep started spiraling out of control, eventually resulting in stupidly powerful content being added and the game becoming too easy, but that's besides the point.

The point is people didn't leave because they were less powerful. They left because they sunk thousands of hours into expensive equipment that favored the duality between mellee and ranged, which went from millions in value to tens of thousands. If they had just. fucking. patched. the game when it was discovered instead of 3 years later nobody would've made a fuzz.

Starmade NEEDS change. The longer you wait before making the changes the more it's going to hurt when they do come. There's no way current ships wont become obsolete, but i'd rather lose a thousand hours of work if it means getting a solid foundation we can work from. That's why schine's bullshit approach of not ballancing the game until later is so awful, and it's just going to keep getting worse. If they'd focus on making a solid, well ballanced foundation from the get-go we could have basic ships working that wouldn't end up ruined every time another shitty patch comes out.

But hey at least we've got FUCKING WHALES right?

Sincerely triggered
Raisinbat

Well, first off I should mention that I read your whole post. So, no need to gripe. :P So long as you don't attack me personally, I will read what you have to say, given that I have the time to do so.

I completely understand your frustrations with the game, but I disagree with you on a few things. Options are not a bad thing. Sandbox games derive a lot of their enjoyment from variety. I played Minecraft on and off for several years, and I also ran a server. I can tell you that vanilla minecraft, was fun for a while, but then it got old after killing the dragon and designing buildings got old. Mods introduced a lot of new mechanics, combat, universes, magic, factories, machines, ect., to the game, and this made it a lot of fun. For StarMade, the game is a bit more ambitious than Minecraft was, because it allows you to actually move very large objects. MineCraft didn't do that. You had a few buggy mods maybe that would allow small ships to float around.. but there were no 5 million block entities moving around everywhere. StarMade is invariably going to be limited by bandwidth and CPU constraints, so I say leave it up to the players how they want to balance capabilities with constraints. Some players may not mind a little bit of lag here and there and want to build their giant titans. Other players might prefer to have more restrictions but a lot less lag in the game. Right now server owners have to artificially create rules and enforce them, but I think they should be able to enforce these rules through modifying the game mechanics.

For power bonuses/restrictions, it's already possible for server owners to remove these. They could simply take off the power cap and give no bonuses to power blocks. Although I can see why it's annoying, having to expand the different axis' for each power grouping to get the bonus.. and this is not realistic at all.. I think it also adds an element to ship building and combat. Without the restriction on power, then everyone would just build giant, massive ships, and it wouldn't be as critical to protect power systems. There must be a way to limit build sizes, if these bonuses and caps are removed. One of my ideas was to allow server owners to specify a maximum block size or weight for entities INCLUDING docked entities. This might actually pair up nicely with removing the restrictions. Though I think more is needed. There needs to be weapons that are better in the hands of players vs turrets. Weapons that are better on smaller ships, as opposed to larger ones.

If you have some time, you might find some of my previous suggestion threads to be interesting.
- Trading and shop modifications (To make trading a lot more viable - This idea was Recognized by Shine)
- Fuel and Ammo based weapons, including power generation that does not scale like normal power
- DoT weapons, Charge-Up weapons, Hacking (Basically to give more purpose and roles to smaller ships and to introduce weapon types that are more useful in the hands of a human rather than a turret)
- StarCharts - This idea is to make exploration necessary to see the universe. The idea is to make it so players can share their maps with each other to expand their view of the universe. This idea was also Recognized by Shine.

My suggestion to you is to try to give constructive criticism and give new ideas on how to better complete the game. Remember that this game is still alpha. Whether you like how fast the progress is going or not, it is what it is, you know? Either enjoy the game, stop playing for a few months and come back to see what has changed, or maybe try to relax a bit. There's no need to be getting so upset, this is just a game, you know?

 

[Lecic]

When i started playing 1½ years ago beams were completely broken, passing harmlessly through ships. They still are.

This is false. Beams are working as intended. I've done plenty of testing, and the only time I see beams phase through things any more is during intense server lag, when where you're shooting isn't where the target really is.

How can they do out of sector combat when combat is such a mess right now?

What part of combat is a mess right now? Is it the lag? The problems with fleet AI? It's definitely not weapons, if that's what you're saying. Sure, a couple weapons are useless (shotguns, pulse, pure missile) and some are definitely better than others and could use some downsides (rapid cannons), but the large majority of weapons have a definite role and use in combat. Most effects and defensive systems are balanced as well.

Okay then my problem is that starmade's mechanics do not allow for any reasonable variety in ship design. Every ship follows the same formulla of mixing in 2.0 thrust to mass, 60% ion effect, scanner, overdrive, and rest goes into weapons power and shield where the only real variation is. You can deviate from this but your ships will always be inferior to ships that dont.

This was clearly written by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. This is merely the most common ship design. It is not the superior design, and I would argue that it is usually an INFERIOR design choice.

There isnt even an appreciable difference between fighters and titans besides speed and size, they function the same way, fly the same way, there isnt even a reason to use different weapons against them because the guns that are good against titans are also going to be good against fighters.

What the hell do you think a titan is? No sane titan builder is giving it a 2:1 ratio and fighter weapons.
And weapon differences? Are you serious? Small ships need to use long reload/high alpha weapons to get through armor and do any damage, whether they're fighting other fighters or larger ships. Larger ships need to use rapid fire weapons or large missile weapons to avoid the overpenetration that occurs with alpha cannons. Please know what you're actually talking about before you talk.

Starmade has 2 worthwhile weapon systems (can/beam and mis/beam), 3 if you count PD systems (can/can), every other weapon system is universally inferior.

This is laughable. You OBVIOUSLY just do not understand how certain weapon types can be useful. Let me show you the real rankings (in my opinion) for weapons. Feel free to argue any of these if you want.

It also means having interior or any other cosmetic pieces of shit on your ship, or just a non-cylindrical hull gets smacked around for absolutely no reason! Look at this ship:

This design would never work in starmade because its wasting massive amounts of surface area with little volume = more armor and less systems! You clowns say you want more variety but this is killing it! Rework passive systems to not be this retarded % shit!

Are you serious? Huge, "useless," surface area like that is great for boosting your armor HP (which is very useful for defense, despite your apparent opinion that shields are the only way to go) and for drawing missiles, turrets, and drones away from your real system masses.

 

[Ithirahad]

Are you serious? Huge, "useless," surface area like that is great for boosting your armor HP (which is very useful for defense, despite your apparent opinion that shields are the only way to go) and for drawing missiles, turrets, and drones away from your real system masses.

If you were going to slap all that hull on your ship anyway, wouldn't it be more 'optimal' to also use it to cover systems? With a ship like that, whether or not the hull is useless, it's doing about half the job that it might be able to do if it were a doom wedge of its same mass and armor block count.

...I'd think?

 

[Lecic]

If you were going to slap all that hull on your ship anyway, wouldn't it be more 'optimal' to also use it to cover systems? With a ship like that, whether or not the hull is useless, it's doing about half the job that it might be able to do if it were a doom wedge of its same mass and armor block count.

...I'd think?

Yes, but it also wouldn't be drawing missiles and AI away from the main body of systems. It comes down to whether you'd want to be blocking shots directly or just diverting them. For this sort of thing, you'd probably have it built mostly out of basic and circuits, with a splattering of various system blocks inside it to maximize it drawing fire away.

 

[Proxima_Centauri]

The best (and most simple) solution to fix the power problem is to raise the 25e/sec/block after the soft cap to 50 or 75 e/sec/block or even higher. That way, large ships can power themselves without docked generators but are still limited compared to smaller ships which don't reach the cap.

 

[Raisinbat]

I completely understand your frustrations with the game, but I disagree with you on a few things. Options are not a bad thing. Sandbox games derive a lot of their enjoyment from variety. I played Minecraft on and off for several years, and I also ran a server. I can tell you that vanilla minecraft, was fun for a while, but then it got old after killing the dragon and designing buildings got old. Mods introduced a lot of new mechanics, combat, universes, magic, factories, machines, ect., to the game, and this made it a lot of fun. For StarMade, the game is a bit more ambitious than Minecraft was, because it allows you to actually move very large objects. MineCraft didn't do that. You had a few buggy mods maybe that would allow small ships to float around.. but there were no 5 million block entities moving around everywhere. StarMade is invariably going to be limited by bandwidth and CPU constraints, so I say leave it up to the players how they want to balance capabilities with constraints. Some players may not mind a little bit of lag here and there and want to build their giant titans. Other players might prefer to have more restrictions but a lot less lag in the game. Right now server owners have to artificially create rules and enforce them, but I think they should be able to enforce these rules through modifying the game mechanics.

And i completely agree with what you want to achieve. Mods are awesome, and i hope we get modding tools for starmade too, but minecraft didnt have a bunch of options letting you change things willy nilly like how far your weapon swings, how fast default movement speed is, how many blocks tall your character is, how much hp mobs have etc etc.

Mods are CONTENT added on top of a base game, not just a value you change. If anything when the base game is totally inconsistent between multiple installations it limits what modders can do; everything has to be made into the same design by curve shit, and since the curves allready work together there isn't room for multiple variants.

My suggestion to you is to try to give constructive criticism and give new ideas on how to better complete the game. Remember that this game is still alpha. Whether you like how fast the progress is going or not, it is what it is, you know? Either enjoy the game, stop playing for a few months and come back to see what has changed, or maybe try to relax a bit. There's no need to be getting so upset, this is just a game, you know?

I'LL GET UPSET IF I WANT DONT TELL ME WHAT TO DO!

I'm not complaining about the rate but that they're ignoring ballance completely. I've played plenty of alpha games, but the way they're going about development is heading for disaster. It's fucking starbound all over again, piling on tons of useless retarded garbage while the game is horrible in almost every way (okay rails are fucking cool as hell, but why whaaaales). I also enjoy the game, it's the forums i can't stand.

 

[Lecic]

The best (and most simple) solution to fix the power problem is to raise the 25e/sec/block after the soft cap to 50 or 75 e/sec/block or even higher. That way, large ships can power themselves without docked generators but are still limited compared to smaller ships which don't reach the cap.

Yeah, that's a good point. What's the effective e/block of a generator, when you account for the blocks taken up by the power transfer system, the power capacitors to hold the power before it's transferred, and the efficiency loss of a power transfer?

Still, while this would be a good hold-over, I would really like a system that requires a bit more complexity than just having bricks of power reactors after 2mil.